if you want to be a teacher, go to law school or medical school, put that much emphasis on the important of teaching young people. but we have to do that as well. pay our teachers better compensation, they are raising the new generation of leadership that will face changes like we never faced during our lifetimes, we have to do more in this area because even though we are rich in natural resources in the 21st century the most important natural resource is the human resource and its brainpower so we have to make sure our young people are given the training they need to compete effectively in a world that is undergoing significant change. >> for more information on

booktv's recent visit to many destinations on our cities tour go to c-span.org/citiestour. >> book passages honor to welcome new york times best-selling author, doctor david kessler, and his new book "capture: unraveling the mystery of mental suffering". why do we think, feel and act in ways we wish we did not? in the new book, the author explores this question. over the course of his investigation, david kessler identifies an underlying factor behind our emotional struggles and mental suffering. it is the first new theory on mental illness and 50 years. capture is an intimate critical exploration of the most enduring human mystery of all, the mind. let me give a warm welcome to

doctor david kessler. >> thank you, monica and thanks to book passage. one of our favorite bookstores and thank you all for coming out this evening. the journey that led to capture began 25 years ago at fda. we began investigation into the tobacco industry and had to learn everything, became very interested, smoke one and 780,000 more over a lifetime. and everything about nicotine and addiction, i became interested in over reading and trying to understand why that chocolate chip cookie has such

power over me. the mechanism in both seem to me, stimulus, hijacks our attention, there is this arousal, increased attention, thoughts of wanting, i eat the cookie, this momentary -- getting through in my brain. two minutes later i go why do i do that? the next time i am exposed to some q associated with that chocolate chip cookie i do it again, i strengthen normal surfaces. i had to learn everything i could about those conditioned and driven behavior. it seems to be evident that we

are all wired, all of us are wired to focus on the salient stimuli in the environment. what do i mean by that? they are walking here. and an important stimuli. with capture to most attention. whether that mechanism, a play in nicotine and overeating. the mechanism involved in a ray of conditions. the most important condition is depression. very few families were not touched in some way, that this

debilitating illness, do you understand what the cause of depression is? if i ask what causes depression in 2016, what are you going to say? what is the answer? what caught life, drugs, drama, genetics accessibility, chemical imbalance, it sounds like from all those answers, we don't know. in 2016, we are really not sure, there is a chemical imbalance at play. the great young writers certainly of this generation, david foster wallace committed suicide. i became very interested, he and

i went to the same college decades later but i wanted to understand what drove david to suicide. let me read the opening paragraph of the book, where the book starts. he left more than a dozen lamps burning, they shone upon the desk, and on the manuscript stacked on top of it, next to the manuscript was a two page letter, this was a scene on the evening, david foster wallace hanging himself. at the age of 46, devastated the literary community. the boldest, most innovative writer of his generation, his novel ingested widely rewarded with critics and thought to redefine postmodern american fiction. the manuscript on the desk which he despaired of ever completing

would be published posthumously. the novel many would later argue contained some of his best work. despite wallace's frustration, his inability to complete the book in some ways, his life had never been better. he married four years earlier, comfortably settled with the kitchen job he loved. why then did he take his own life? what is the underlying cause of the depression that governed his deep unhappiness? depression. every time i ask what caused his suicide all i heard was the word depression. this made them exempt from the audit and to excel first as a student and later as a writer and others to recognize his genius.

he wanted to be read in 100 years, yet as soon as he -- critical acclaim, he grew uneasy and despairing. he suspected something crooked about the way he achieved success. he was haunted by fraudulent paradox. as an adult he was always on high alert, sensitive to signs beguiling imposter. in the margins of a book he scribbled the following, grandiosity, he is seen as a superstar. it is a reflexive thought, one that made him feel bad, he encountered something that makes his sense of credibility and any

number of things that threaten his sense of credibility, praise academic success, romantic attention, someone laughing at his jokes. in such moments his life became a lonely performance. everything else seated into the background. the feeling encompass to more strongly each time he experienced it gaining traction in his mind. depression, depression, i would hypothesize involves a continual focus, negative thought, experiences, memories and feelings to the exclusion of all else. the process of being captured by the negative seems particularly true for david. it would be impossible to know how many ways he was gripped by self-doubt but seems fair to say he was seized by his self-destructive refrain.

he knew it but felt powerless to change it. this is what he wrote, what goes on inside is too fast and huge and too interconnected for words to sketch the outlines of at most one tiny part of it. no matter what the success, personal or professional, reflected well on him and took in everything that could be constructed or construed bad. this detriment can only lead to enormous pain. in this heartbreaking life, self-perpetuating spiral, led to suicide. self harm, of different kinds. it shifted from tormenting thoughts.

it was existed within a dark world inside the shame locked in what some might view as narcissistic behavior, praised in perfection is more accurately understood as an overwhelming debilitating sense of anxiety and -- funny, happy and loving and never able to shift his attention away from what made him feel bad for a sustained period of time. he could not, as he once wrote, perceive any other person of independence of the universal -- everything he wrote is part of the problem. it is the negative perception of self, the sense of being a

fraud. how such a focus makes him feel? incredible, intense sadness and then what captures? sadness, that output then becomes the input and sustaining itself. is it possible to unravel the mystery of mental illness, decipher the range of intense mental distress? we talk about anxiety as if they are different inflections. and symptoms associated with them because i would argue they are really responses to a neural process that happens in all of us. let me suggest, i understand

this is a, but a common mechanism underlies our emotional struggle and melt all -- mental illnesses, the stimulus, takes hold of our attention and shifts our perception. and it focuses on that stimulus and what we do -- what would consciously happen. the theory of capture involves three essential elements, narrowing of attention, lack of control, there is a sense someone is pulling the change aspect or emotional state. when something command our attention, in a way that feels uncontrollable in turn influences our behavior we experience capture.

capture seizes our attention quietly. we sense a mental shift but we do not understand where it comes from. the experience occurred outside conscious control and we surrender to it. it is -- when we are drawn to a particular stimulus we act in response to a feeling aroused by them. it prompts us to repeat these actions. certain grooves being laid down. strengthening neural circuits. there is a biological horror. neurons that fire together, a biological basis, why our attention shifts based on past

learning and passed memory, past experiences shape what my attention will focus. as we continue to react in the same way to the same stimulus we are sensitized, learning memory, these are special circuits, who has the motivational circuits in them? we all do. when we sensitize those circuits it is true of all of us, they can arise automatically. william james, went back to read the papers, one of the last great psychologists to talk about attention. the question was why a certain idea is so strong, to coerce attention. how does the stimulus become

salient for you or me, or a bright stimulus. and give all objects salience. there is also salience, powerful desires ordis-distant roles. a major life event. anything that is meaningful that could capture our attention. the same stimulus is generating no response at all. let's just go through, the effective conditions. and ask what captures us.

what is salient for the person who suffers from anxiety, what can it be, the chocolate chip cookie, creating thoughts of wanting anxiety, what captures my attention to make me fearful? and going over, the golden gate bridge, chorale anyone of you, it could be standing on a ledge, fear of being a fraud or an expectation of something bad that is going to happen. what about the eating disorders? what becomes salience? rather than over reading. the food is going to make me feel bad.

multiple captures going on, over an entire day, how do you think that will make me feel? and how do they make me feel in control? is anorexia the fear of food or that love of control, and trauma, harm that was done to us, posttraumatic stress disorder, captured by an event that was life-changing, being abandoned. the chapter on sylvia plath, the fear of being abandoned captured her.

i become hyper alert, by focusing on the body symptom i become fearful that something is terribly wrong. with bipolar illness, fill the void, anything that will make me feel better, the reward, constant striving captures me. virginia woolf became focused to be institutionalized. she was afraid others would label her as going mad. it would interfere with her work. cuba from washington is dispatched and told hemingway to get out of cuba. and using a word in washington,

the word was trade. hemingway said i am not political. this is where i am right? and used that word, became increasingly concerned about finances, and addiction, the power of addiction lies in the grip to be able to hold the same neural circuits. when we encounter a stimulus, to behave in the same way over and over again. certainly true for alcohol. the great writer, talk about the effect of capture, not even the alcohol. i love the sounds of the drink, the slide as it eased out of the

wine bottle. pouring into a class, the clatter of ice cubes, it wasn't a drink. the capture is the result, certainly an addiction, they take over. there was no significance in the absence of association with past experience. if you have never been a smoker i assure you the crinkling of cellophane, and no resonance. have the urge for a cigarette. john belushi died of cocaine and heroin, what were the triggers. if he didn't get into a scene on saturday night live, he would

use, if he had a scene and it was a great success, the one thing he said was i don't understand why i can't stop, capture can lead to behavior, and thingsike itself. it was one of the most devastating capture. you can take all the food use out. the focus of the attention. you can't escape the cell. when someone is captured, the object is external and when a person becomes captured by an

abiding sense. psychopathic behavior, traditionally understood as one. if you read about psychopathic behavior, and failure of empathy. one might ask his presence along with eric harris, dylan klee bold murdered 13 people in columbine high school in april 1999. throughout his journals, very interesting, focusing on people's own words, not someone who interpreted. want to understand what is going on in the minds of the time of people. you read in these journals, someone had a grudge against his peer group who resents the social injustices of a high

school culture that excluded him. get to the yearbook, this is what he writes in his diary. if i could knew the world, i would. then he goes on. everyone is always making fun of me because how i look. how weak i am. i will get you all back. ultimate revenge here. you people could have shown more respect, treated me better, treated me more like a senior. maybe i wouldn't have been ready to tear your heads off. that is where my hate grows from. you see in this child, this adolescent, the slights in high school, couldn't shake. i know what all of you are thinking and how to piss you off

and make you feel bad. not just about feeling bad, what was he going to do to feel better? i feel like god. i wish i was having everyone officially lower than me, i already know that i am higher than most anyone in the world. ted kaczynski, the unit bomber, hard time adjusting, no question, awkward, very very smart decides to become a survivalist in the montana wilderness. before he started sending bombs on july 24, 1978, this is what he wrote in his diary. i ask you, listen to this,

yesterday, heard only eight jets. today was good in nearly morning but later in the morning there was an aircraft noise almost without intermission. i would estimate about an hour and there was a loud sonic boom. this was the last straw and reduced me to tears of impotent rage, but i have a plan for revenge. he wanted to be left alone. by silence i don't mean all sounds, only man-made sounds. most natural sounds are soothing. some are magnificent and i enjoy them but aircraft noise is an insult, a slap in the face, a symptom of the evil of modern society. invasion of technology. he wanted to be left alone but he counted the number of jets that would fly over his cabin.

three days before killing bobby kennedy, watching tv broadcast, kennedy promised to sell 50 phantom jets to israel. all of a sudden see ron, the christian palestinian took that as an affront, created such rage. newtown, what became salient, mass murder of itself became salient. capture has even more significance when the salience object is ideological. after all, ideologies have a powerful allure to the disenfranchised, the individual becomes dedicated to a higher cause which promises to give some meaning to his or her life, to connect him or her with something greater. it is more than a need to

destroy. i am not pleased, not giving excuses but we need to understand what drives a terrorist attack or, terrorists are captured by an idea. terrorists become enthralled by the belief they are fighting for a cause larger than they are, the truth that transcends itself. but here is the important part. not only are we captured by something meaningful but we can be captured by positive stimuli, capture is neutral, they respond to alien stimuli in the environment, can be positive. conversion or dedication to a greater course can result in the

opposite, benevolence that positively influences the lives of others. what is spiritual experience? it has been described as a feeling of absolute dependence. being grasped by an ultimate concern, moments of release in ordinary perception. the catalyst may be spiritual or aesthetic in nature, a tone, landscape, a moment of quiet meditation, a feeling that comes sweeping in like a gentle tide, providing the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest warship. a german theologian, several hundred years ago. david wallace wrote about this. i understood his relationship between the human and the divine. wallace came to believe there was no such thing as not

worshiping. everyone worships, the only choice is what to warship. the compelling reason for may be choosing some sort of god or spiritual type thing to warship, whether it is jay z or allah or the weekend mother goddess or some in viable set of ethical principles, pretty much anything else you warship will eat you alive. rewiring of the brain, strengthening neural circuits is possible because capture applies to positive as well as negative appearances. charitable acts, spiritual transcendence. my goal to capture away to look at mental suffering. my goal is to pull back the

curtain. depression was a label we gave to a group of symptoms. then we said what causes that group of symptoms? that label, that name, depression. what we need to do is to pull back the curtain. if we could understand, if you feel a loss of control, and you don't know why, those are pathways to psychic panic. the real question you want to know is how do you release yourself from capture? the most important secret, if you would, about capture, one of the most effective ways to be released from capture is to find something else that is more meaningful. no doubt if you look at buddhism what does it teach? it tries to quiet stimulus.

what are the antidepressants? they try to quiet the activity. i think the answer, one of the most effective ways, you are not going to get rid of the circuits. only death limits the circuits from operating. the answers to negative capture with a positive capture, if there is any hero in the book, i think it is exemplified by chris webb, the great graphic novelist, somebody you i am sure have read his graphic novel. somewhere in this bookstore is a big box called building stories. if you open one of the works in building stories, that first page, big circle says i want to go to sleep and never wake up. chris suffered from enormous,

heartbreaking depression but then something changed. this is what chris told me. all of a sudden you are no longer -- what happened? he had a child. that changed everything for him. all of a sudden you are no longer the protagonist. the movie has a new cast. all of a sudden you are a supporting actor and you suddenly realize what you have been, that is what you have been all along and that is the way every human being should be and that is the way you should be living your life. in light of new priorities at least in his case his social anxiety, his hypersensitivity, this is the way he shifted his own perception. he said all that anxiety, really just a self-indulgent form of

egotism. that is the way he changed it. not i am agreeing with him, he changed the way he perceived. and to act with purpose, the mechanism does not in and of itself give meaning to our lives but search -- over the course, each of us is a coherent account, fragmentary chaos, bombarded with thousands of stimuli any a one of which could become meaningful at any instance, over time for all of a sudden characters and experiences emerge as central. it was summed up in a few words,

we tell ourselves stories in order to live. we become captured by certain themes and we need to make sense. is there freedom from capture? can we throw a switch and see the entire stage for what it is? the most basic sense the answer is no. by its very nature, each of our own personal experiences, history, economic situations, it dictates what becomes salient for us. they determine how much we experience the world and who we become. the important part, and will

what captures to us. what captures us would change. [applause] >> if anybody has a question? >> your conclusion, therapies -- would not be therapeutic or helpful in light of being captured. i would like to hear what you think of those modalities as possible therapy. >> a lot of different schools of

therapy, when you look at the core of all of them is to change how i respond to certain stimulus. it gives me tools. i can't will it but i can put myself in position to be able to have a chance at becoming captured by something else. cognitive behavioral therapy, changing how i perceive my world, dbt, the ability to change how i react emotionally. they all tend, we tend to think about them for certain disorders, this one or that one, really about critical perceptual shifts, about trying to find

some release. one of the psychotherapists i talked to in the book summed it up to me when she -- we were talking about freedom and she was very uncomfortable with freedom from capture. i don't think any of these modalities are freedom from capture but she focused very much on release and again no doubt it is hard work but one of the most essential tools we have. >> good evening. first of all, thank you for your service to our country. >> thank you.

>> i have a particular question for you that has to do with children our particular organization serves which is the 1.5 million young children, 6 to 17 who were incarcerated for juvenile crime and we have investigated what leads them to those activities and what can get them out and i am interested in your thoughts on the developmental stage of adolescence. i don't do the work because i'm altruistic. i do it because kids are fascinating. and because of their altruism and loyalty that is endemic to that stage. i wonder if you have comments about that. >> absolutely. enormously insightful point about that stage. i didn't expect to go there. i really wanted to focus on

mental distress, and mental suffering, depression and anxiety and ocd and eating disorders. you said they have it all but i ended up looking at a number of cases of violence. i was drawn there. you will remember i was struck -- i watched the entire trial of james holmes. the aurora theater neuroscientist phd student dressed up as batman and killed dozens of people in aurora. what struck me, he is 22, 23, by the time he committed that act, you try to understand how these circuits built over the 22 years of his life.

at the age of 13, he says i start having -- i started thinking about hurting myself. started thinking about hurting someone else. he asked why don't you seek help? he says i couldn't. if i did, if i told people i was having these bad thoughts, that i was in essence captured by these intrusive thoughts that we all have, my parents would view me as bad. i sit there and listen to that as a therapist. you just say you wished you could have proceeded, and got him the appropriate mental health care but to explain to him, this is what i think it is,

if there was anything i could emphasize. is it people who suffer, did horrendous and terrible things, and there is an organism, and the ability to be captured by certain stimuli. and and if you knew that

biologically, and there was a whole range of things. some are captured by spiritual experiences, some are captured by hatred of others, some are captured by drugs. if you want to test hypotheses, and you have to go further than looking at the world around us but certainly the goal to me is to explain to people what is going on because that is the first step. >> this gentleman in the back here? >> talking about the neurological basis, what hard evidence do you have to go along with these phenomena or any special cases? >> there are 120 pages of

footnotes in the book. i am happy to go through that. what is important, there are scientific methodologies, we can look -- increasingly when you look at neurological literature, you see the importance of salience in a range of disorders and you can measure intentional capture and effective response. your basic neurobiology. any theory has to be explained. in terms of how neurons work, what do neurons do? neurons fight. neurons can fire preferentially. when they go to the preferential firing, it can be strengthened

so in fact neural circuits can respond to certain stimuli over other stimuli so when you realize intentional capture correlates with how neurons work and you look at specific evidence in arange of disorders, increasingly, again no one has looked across the board, you have to look at the literature in each and every disease condition. ..